Wiring Schools for Internet

NetDay’s corporate sponsors and volunteers deserve our communities’ recognition and thanks for their effort to jump-start the connection of California’s public schools to the Internet. Thanks to their hard work, hundreds of schools can now begin to explore the information superhighway.

But the most important and perhaps unforeseen contribution of NetDay has been to make everyone more aware of the growing importance of access to technology, and the large number of children, particularly those from low-income families and neighborhoods, who lack access to it.

As you pointed out in “ ‘High-Tech Barn Raising’ Shows Disparity of Schools” (March 6), there is a large and growing disparity between the haves and have-nots of this new age of information technology. If our future work force is to have the skills it will need to succeed, action is needed now to ensure broad access to technology and training. Schools, libraries and community centers represent the best opportunity to create that access. NetDay is a start. But it is only a start. The rest is up to all of us concerned with the future of our children, the growth of our economy and the rebuilding of our communities.

WENDY LAZARUS

The Children’s Partnership

Santa Monica

* “Volunteers Wire 2,500 Schools on NetDay” (March 10) was not honest or fair and did nothing to build goodwill for Beethoven Street Elementary School. We chose to make this a grass-roots, broad-based effort which involved the total school community, in partnership with business. This did not happen in a vacuum; it was the result of many long hours of persistent effort on the part of many. We should be supported and encouraged, not maligned.

Our needs as a school should not be minimized because we are located on the Westside. Shame on you for not doing your homework! If you had, you would have learned that 60% of our students receive free or reduced-price lunches, a criterion used to indicate the level of poverty. Our computers are older than many of our students. Does this make us a rich Westside school?

Even though our budget and resources are meager, we are rich in our efforts to work as a team, to believe in ourselves, to strive for excellence, to have a high level of parent involvement, and to have a staff dedicated to improving student achievement.

MARGARET BILLUPS THOMAS

Principal, Beethoven Street

Elementary School, Los Angeles

* It’s great to hear that President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were in California last weekend to sign on California schools to the Internet. Now we will have children unable to read, write and do simple math sitting in front of a computer with access to the Internet.

This is no substitute for a “real, live” good teacher and basic education. Has anyone in California or Washington thought about reforming the educational system? If we do not get back to basics (phonics and old-fashioned math techniques) soon, this state and the entire country will have lost hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of children.

They may graduate from high school, but then what?

MADELYN SILMAN

Huntington Beach